Nigeria Books

A History of Nigeria

Toyin Falola, Matthew M. Heaton

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Editorial Review:

Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and the world's eighth largest oil producer, but its success has been undermined in recent decades by ethnic and religious conflict, political instability, rampant official corruption and an ailing economy. Toyin Falola, a leading historian intimately acquainted with the region, and Matthew Heaton, who has worked extensively on African science and culture, combine their expertise to explain the context to Nigeria's recent troubles through an exploration of its pre-colonial and colonial past, and its journey from independence to statehood. By examining key themes such as colonialism, religion, slavery, nationalism and the economy, the authors show how Nigeria's history has been swayed by the vicissitudes of the world around it, and how Nigerians have adapted to meet these challenges. This book offers a unique portrayal of a resilient people living in a country with immense, but unrealized, potential.

BIAFRA STORY

Frederick Forsyth

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Unjustly forgotten classic of the Biafran War 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

Forsyth is known for his later works the "Day of the Jackal", "Odessa File" and "Dogs of War". This though is his first book and in many ways superior to the rest.

A non-fiction detailed description of the Biafran war, Forsyth pulls no punches describing the valiant but fruitless fight by the Ibo tribe to secede from Nigeria. Outnumbered, outgunned and out financed by the central government, the Ibo finally fell because of the support of the European powers for Nigeria.

Forsyth does a wonderful job in giving us a journalist eye view of the conflict which eventually became known more for the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Ibo. A long forgotten classic that has never been outdone by his later novels.

Editorial Review:

The Nigerian civil war of the late 1960s was one of the first occasions when Western consciences were awakened and deeply affronted by the level of the suffering and the scale of the atrocity being played out in the African Continent.

This book which marked Frederick Forsyth's transition from journalist to author is a record of one of the most brutal conflicts the Third World has ever suffered, it has become a classic of modern war reporting. But it is more than that. It voices one man's outrage not only at the extremes of human violence, but also at the duplicity and self-interest of the Western Governments - most notably, the British, who tacitly accepted or actively aided that violence.

The combination of the dramatic events and the shocking exposures combined with the author's forthright and perceptive style makes The Biafra Story as compelling a read today as when it was first written.

Fela: Life And Times Of An African

Michael Veal

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Musician, political critic, and hedonist, international superstar Fela Anikulapo-Kuti created a sensation throughout his career. In his own country of Nigeria, he was simultaneously adulated and loathed, often by the same people at the same time. His outspoken political views and advocacy of marijuana smoking and sexual promiscuity offended many, even as his musical brilliance enthralled them. In his creation of afrobeat, he melded African traditions with African-American and Afro-Caribbean influences to revolutionize world music. Although harassed, beaten, and jailed by Nigerian authorities, he continued his outspoken and derisive criticism of political corruption at home and economic exploitation from abroad. A volatile mixture of personal characteristics charisma, musical talent, maverick lifestyle, populist ideology, and persistence in the face of persecution made him a legend throughout Africa and the world. Celebrated during the 1970's as a musical innovator and spokesman for the continent's oppressed masses, he enjoyed worldwide celebrity during the 1980's and was recognized in the 1990's as a major pioneer and elder statesman of African music. By the time of his death in 1997 from AIDS-related complications, Fela had become something of a Nigerian institution. In Africa, the idea of transnational alliance, once thought to be outmoded, has gained new currency. In African-America, during a period of increasing social conservatism and ethnic polarization, Africa has re-emerged as a symbol of cultural affirmation. At such a historical moment, Fela's music offers a perspective on race, class, and nation on both sides of the Atlantic. As Professor Veal demonstrates, over three decades Fela synthesized a unique musical language while also clearing if only temporarily a space for popular political dissent and a type of counter-cultural expression rarely seen in West Africa. In the midst of political turmoil in Africa, as well as renewal of pro-African cultural nationalism throughout the diaspora, Fela's political music functions as a post-colonial art form that uses cross-cultural exchange to voice a unique and powerful African essentialism. Author note: Michael E. Veal is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Yale University. In addition to being thoroughly grounded in the literature on Nigeria, African music, and the world music scene, he played as a guest saxophonist with Fela and his band Egypt 80, and has conducted interviews with Fela himself, and with his colleagues and other Nigerian musicians.

This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis

Karl Maier

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A journey into contemporary Africa's most powerful and most corrupt nation.

To understand Africa, one must understand Nigeria, and few Americans understand Nigeria better than Karl Maier. This House Has Fallen is a bracing and disturbing report on the state of Africa's most populous, potentially richest, and most dangerously dysfunctional nation.

Each year, with depressing consistency, Nigeria is declared the most corrupt state in the entire world. Though Nigeria is a nation into which billions of dollars of oil money flow, its per capita income has fallen dramatically in the past two decades. Military coup follows military coup. A bellwether for Africa, it is a country of rising ethnic tensions and falling standards of living, very possibly on the verge of utter collapse -- a collapse that could dramatically overshadow even the massacres in Rwanda.

A brilliant piece of reportage and travel writing, This House Has Fallen looks into the Nigerian abyss and comes away with insight, profound conclusions, and even some hope. Updated with a new preface by the author.

Surviving in Biafra: The Story of the Nigerian Civil War

Alfred Obiora Uzokwe

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Political Book Told Honestly 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I loved this book because it is similar to reading a personal diary or journal left by a child. It is honest and funny,sad and poignant.

The author, Mr. Uzokwe, doesn't speak as an authoritarian or an analyst. He simply tells the story of what he saw, felt and experienced as a child living in a war torn world. This includes some sorrow but also reminds us of the naiveté and life as usual wanderings of a child's mind. (Not unlike the film "Life is Beautiful" depicting a child's experience in Nazi Germany)

I have read the F. Forsythe book and other material on the subject of the Nigerian Civil War. I recommend those earlier works primarily on historical merit. However in my opinion, Surviving In Biafra is the most heart-felt story telling perhaps because the innocence depicted heightens the senselessness of the nearly 2 million lives lost. Although the subject matter is heavy, many passages are funny and endearing. As a non-African reader I found some ideas and practices presented odd and intriguing. The book is about family relations, community responses and how coping affects everyone differently. A variety of cultural norms are revealed and an overall picture of life in a small war torn village is painted quite beautifully. Many words, phrases and saying and songs are translated into the (then Biafran) native language of Ibo, and a variety of photos are included which adds nice documentation.

Anyone interested in peace will benefit from the truth presented in Surviving In Biafra. For those interested in the holocaust or other genocide attempts it is a must read. Likewise, for those interested in affirming the joy of life and the enduring human spirit this reading is a memorable journey.

Editorial Review:

In 1966, several waves of rioting in northern Nigeria culminated in the brutal massacre of thousands of easterners by their northern Nigerian counterparts. Sensing that their safety could no longer be guaranteed, the easterners fled to the eastern region and established an independent nation called Biafra.

Refusing to accept her sovereignty, Nigeria waged a thirty-month war against Biafra, targeting air assaults at civilian locations, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of children, women, and the elderly. Nigeria used land and sea blockade to prevent relief food from reaching hungry masses in Biafra and thousands of children died from a form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor. At the end of it all in 1970, two million people had perished.

The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey

Randy J. Sparks

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Editorial Review:

In 1767, two "princes" of a ruling family in the port of Old Calabar, on the slave coast of Africa, were ambushed and captured by English slavers. The princes, Little Ephraim Robin John and Ancona Robin Robin John, were themselves slave traders who were betrayed by African competitors--and so began their own extraordinary odyssey of enslavement. Their story, written in their own hand, survives as a rare firsthand account of the Atlantic slave experience.

Randy Sparks made the remarkable discovery of the princes' correspondence and has managed to reconstruct their adventures from it. They were transported from the coast of Africa to Dominica, where they were sold to a French physician. By employing their considerable language and interpersonal skills, they cleverly negotiated several escapes that took them from the Caribbean to Virginia, and to England, but always ended in their being enslaved again. Finally, in England, they sued for, and remarkably won, their freedom. Eventually, they found their way back to Old Calabar and, evidence suggests, resumed their business of slave trading.

The Two Princes of Calabar offers a rare glimpse into the eighteenth-century Atlantic World and slave trade from an African perspective. It brings us into the trading communities along the coast of Africa and follows the regular movement of goods, people, and ideas across and around the Atlantic. It is an extraordinary tale of slaves' relentless quest for freedom and their important role in the creation of the modern Atlantic World.

Women in Igbo Life and Thought

Josep Agbasiere

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Editorial Review:

A member of the Igbo tribe of Nigeria who became a nun and trained as an anthropologist, Joseph Therese Agbasiere had a unique opportunity to transcend some of the preconceptions and subjectivities inevitable when an "outsider" studies a native society. Her richly detailed ethnography examines kinship practices, marriage customs, and women's responsibilities in the house and the community, establishing the tremendous influence that Igbo women wield in public affairs.

Shadows : Airlift and Airwar in Biafra and Nigeria 1967-1970

Michael I. Draper

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Nigerian Civil War broke out in 1967 after the country's Eastern Region declared itself the independent state of Biafra. The war lasted three years, pitting the Nigerian Air Force against the ill-equipped Biafran Air Force in one of the most intense conflicts ever to occur on African soil. The Biafran Air Force was armed with a motley mix of antiquated and modem aircraft, whereas the Nigerian Air Force was made up of mostly mercenary-crewed MiG 17s, Il 28s and L-29 Delfins. Biafra was not only overshadowed and outclassed by Nigeria, but it was also landlocked for most of the conflict. However, despite the many setbacks, the Biafran Air Force held out, supporting an amazing airlift of food and arms, second only to the Berlin Airlift of 1948. Fusing firsthand accounts and much original documentation, Shadows is the story of the largest civilian relief airlift ever mounted. Shadows was officially launched at the House of Commons in London on January 12, 2000, the 30th anniversary of the end of the Nigerian Civil War. It has already been named the book of the month of April by Aeroplane Monthly and other special features are to appear in Flypast Magazine.

The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria

David Pratten

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Editorial Review:

The Man-Leopard Murders is an account of murder and politics in Africa and an historical ethnography of southern Annang communities during the colonial period. Its narrative leads to events between 1945 and 1948 when the imperial gaze of police, press, and politicians was focused on a series of mysterious deaths in southeastern Nigeria attributed to the "man-leopard society." These murder mysteries, reported as the "biggest, strangest murder hunt in the world," were not just forensic but also historical. The murders were related to the broad impact of commercial, Christian, and colonial relations on Annang society, and debate and conflict over the moral order of Annang society.

Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)

Christopher Alan Waterman

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Now known internationally through the recordings of King Sunny Ade and others, juju music originated more than fifty years ago among the Yoruba of Nigeria. This history and ethnography of juju is the first detailed account of the evolution and social significance of a West African popular music. Enhanced with maps, color photographs of musicians and dance parties, musical transcriptions, interviews with musicians, and a glossary of Yoruba terms, Juju is an invaluable contribution to scholarship and a boon to fans who want to discover the roots of this vibrant music.

"What's most impressive about Juju is how much Waterman makes of his purism. By concentrating on one long- lived, well-defined genre, he helps the Western reader experience 'rock' the way any proud Yoruba would—as a tributary of African music rather than vice versa."—Robert Christgau, The Village Voice

The companion cassette tape contains examples of the music discussed in the text. The music examples are primarily from commercial recordings from the 1930s to the 1980s.